Paul Sims at the press conference
If Paul Sims was surprised to be leading the Land Rover Burghley Horse Trials at lunch time today he was even more surprised to be in third place at the end of the day
Paul, who has finished 25th and 24th at Burghley in the past two years says that ‘It’s unbelievable that I’m third really - ridiculous’ but the judges obviously didn’t think so
Paul Sims
It was always going to be a hard task to remain at the top of the leader board on a score of 46.6 with Bettina Hoy coming up in the afternoon and Bettina certainly blitzed the field with the only sub-40 score of the day on 34.5, which also included the only 10 of the day for the Medium Walk and Halt.
Bettina says that Designer 10 (above) finds this work more difficult than his stable mate Seigneur Medicott but it certainly didn’t look the case today with Designer 10 moving the level of competition up a notch. The first scores from the judges, who had not been overly generous all day, included a nine and this set the trend for this test which finished the day eight penalties ahead of second placed Bill Levett and Improvise
Bill Levett was very pleased with his test on Improvise (above) although he is sure that there is more to come from this elegant Irish Sport Horse by Master Imp, as was shown by his score at Blair Castle last weekend. Bill will now spend a bit of time recuperating from a strained muscle he incurred, also at Blair, before the cross country on Saturday
The USA’s Elise Wallace and Simply Priceless remain in fourth place on 46.8 (listen to our interview with Elise in this morning’s article) and Britain’s Ros Canter, who has a busy time here with not only Allstar B in the CCI4* but also several horses in the Dubarry Young Event Horse class tomorrow, finishes the day in fifth on 47.
In sixth place is New Zealand’s Jonelle Price on Classic Moet (above) who was a little disappointed with her score today of 48.5. Captain Mark Phillips has warned the riders not to underestimate the course this year but Jonelle still thinks, on first walking, that it is a little easier than last year although ‘between now and Saturday I’ll shake myself up and try and make it look more difficult!’
Sarah Bullimore, Emily Gilruth, Andrew Hoy and Tim Price round out the current top ten with Shane Rose and Paul Tapner in 11th and 12th places – we’ll be hearing from these two riders in our next articles coming up soon
With the beautiful weather and fabulous shopping, the crowds are loving Burghley
